Thursday, December 13, 2012

The First Hobbit Film: Some Thoughts

WARNING: MANY, MANY SPOILERS

Utterly consistent with the previous Peter Jackson Lord
of the Rings films, The Hobbit has the same strengths and the same
weaknesses as those movies. It is visually stunning from the large scale to the
small. The landscape is lush and beautiful, and so perfectly rendered in the 3d
format that it often feels as if you are looking out of a window rather than at
a film, and the details of sets, costumes and make-up are remarkable. The CGI
material is seamlessly integrated, making it almost impossible to find the
boundary between the computer-generated and the traditionally made. Casting is
excellent. The characters look right, and the acting is extremely well done
within the limits of the script and the directing. Ian Holm, Andy Serkis, Ian
McKellen, Kate Blanchette are as good as they were in The Lord of the Rings,
and Martin Freeman (Bilbo) and Richard
Armitage (Thorin) interpret their characters well. Balin the dwarf is kind and
warm-hearted as he should be, and the decision to give each dwarf bizarre and
distinctive facial hair and other ornaments was a good one (but there are still
a lot of dwarves to keep track of, and I don’t think I ever did get it entirely
clear which ones were Oin, Gloin, Nori, Ori, and Bofur).

It’s hard to over-emphasize how important the sets and the
landscape are to the film, and how Jackson’s A+ in these areas compensates for
weaknesses in others. One thing that makes Tolkien’s works different from
almost all the other literature of the 20th century is the deep
desire it stirs in readers to go there. Whatever else there is to
criticize Peter Jackson about, he’s helped bring this wish true for many readers,
and that is no small feat. It’s important to give him credit for really making
the film beautiful and not trying to get away with cheap back-lot images and
effects because the Tolkien name would have brought in a certain number of
viewers no matter what.

That said, I had some issues. These are all more in sorrow
than in anger, because I think Jackson had the opportunity to make a great film
but missed it—in part because of the lowest-common-denominator needs of global
Hollywood, but also in part because he and screenwriter Philippa Boyens didn’t
entirely understand their material or trust their audience.

The problems come from the script and the directing, and
they are the same problems of the first trilogy of films. But before I get to
these, I want to address what I think it a misguided criticism, leveled in Variety
and elsewhere: the idea that The Hobbit should be a light-hearted
children’s story and played more for laughs than epic seriousness. If we accept
the governing conceit of The Lord of the Rings (both book and films)
that we are playing it straight, that these particular events really did happen
to these characters, then there’s nothing wrong with treating them as serious
and important. What Bilbo ended up doing—in the world of the text—really was epic and heroic, but when (in the
conceit of the Red Book of Westmarch frame narrative) he told about it
afterwards, he made it comic, a
children’s story. There’s nothing wrong with showing “what really happened”
rather than sticking to the way The Hobbit treats the events, and ironically
Tolkien himself started to do something similar. In 1960 he began a revision of
The Hobbit intended to make it consistent in both content and style to The
Lord of the Rings. He let a friend see this revised version, and got the
reply that the new version was nice, “but it’s not The Hobbit,” and so
abandoned it. But Jackson need not apologize for treating the events without
irony, as if they are true, and keeping the serious, epic tone of The
Lord of the Rings.

What he should apologize for is a script with a fair number
of false notes, missed opportunities and unnecessary changes. Tolkien’s text is
not a film script, and there’s nothing wrong with adapting the story to fit the
constraints of audience attention. Some of the changes are clever and effective
and help illuminate the characters or the plot. For example, in the text,
Tolkien makes little of the exiled dwarves’ wish to return to what was once their
home: the driving emotion is “the desire of the hearts of dwarves” for gold and
things made by craft, or for revenge against the dragon. Jackson effectively
goes beyond the book when he depicts the dwarves as suffering from homesickness
and longing. But at other times Hollywood schlock oozes up, and in others
Jackson’s own playful (or goofy) tendencies—which can work very well in some
places, such as most of the troll scene—should have been reined in in the
interest of a more effective film.

The first false note is a small but telling script blunder.
At the very beginning, in an overview of the history of Erebor, the narrator
says that Thror, King of the Dwarves, “ruled as if by divine right.” This line
is utterly irrelevant to everything that happens later, and it is jarring for
no good reason. There are no references to God or religion in Middle-earth, so
to invoke, through one of the top ten ideas of 1643 is incomprehensible and
totally unnecessary. You could, if you
wanted, make some reference to Tolkien lore at this point, and there are
innumerable other ways to say that Thror was arrogant or entitled. The
film-makers took infinite pains over hundreds of tiny details, but they left a
fair number of little turds like this one in the script: making Erebor the
“greatest kingdom in Middle-earth”—why? Because an amazing dwarf kingdom under
a mountain that is attacked by a dragon in a visually remarkable sequence isn’t
enough? We have to be told it’s huge? Jackson should have trusted his
visuals to say enough.

The largest plot-related flaw is the way the War of the
Dwarves and Orcs is handled. This is material from the Appendix A that is
brought into the main narrative, and the review from the Associated Press is wrong
in saying that this material is “bloat” to stretch The Hobbit into three
films. The quest of Thorin and Company needed to interface with the epic
storyline of The Lord of the Rings, and the War of the Dwarves and Orcs
is a good way to do that. But the way the script handles this (excellent and
exciting) material is weak. On the one hand, everything is personalized: the
war seems like it is primarily a feud between Thorin and Azog, the Albino Orc.
But at the same time, Jackson operates on the theory that each battle in the
film series has to be bigger than the last, so there are about 144,000 dwarves
and orcs, so we care about none of them. There’s elaborate choreography, but no
emotion in what should be a very emotional scene. I think if Jackson had
followed the appendix text, made the beginnings of the battle small and
extremely personal (the desecration of Thror’s corpse, Thrain sitting shiva and
then saying “this cannot be borne” in a laconic tone), he would have made us
care about the battle and the characters far more than the pure spectacle does.

Moby Orc, er, Azog (he should be Bolg if we follow the Lore
even a little) is the most fake-looking monster in the entire film, and really
doesn’t do much to add tension to the story. It’s a repeat of the major
unforced error from the first set of films of making Middle-earth too small
(Saruman standing on Orthanc can see over to the Redhorn pass; elves can trot
over from Lothlorien to Helm’s Deep in a few minutes). Azog is just sitting
there on his Bengal-tiger-sized warg, waiting for Thorin to pass by. Jackson’s
Middle-earth has New Zealand’s remarkable scenery all stuffed into a place the
size of Disney World or maybe Rhode Island.

The other important sub-plot—the return of evil to Mirkwood
and the rise of Sauron—is less effective, though to be fair, it looks to be
more developed in the subsequent films. Unfortunately this sub-plot is
entangled with the portrayal of the wizard Radagast the Brown. Radagast is played for laughs, but it’s not
particularly funny (or original; Radagast is visually T.H. White’s Merlin from The
Once and Future King, even to the bird nesting under his hat and leaving
droppings). The sled pulled by giant rabbits is remarkably stupid in
conception, but, surprisingly, not as awful as I first thought it would be (and
to be fair, one of the funniest and nerdiest lines in the film comes from
Radagast. Gandalf warns him “Those are Gundobad Wargs. They’ll catch and eat
you,” Radagast replies “These are Rhosgobel Rabbits. I’d like to see them try.”).
But the entire Necromancer-in-Mirkwood sub-plot is terribly done. Dol Guldur
isn’t particularly good visually, and, in a place where there was plenty of
actual lore to use, Jackson invents spurious lore about a magic tomb in the
mountains or something that is difficult to follow and does not make much
sense. Have the characters think the Necromancer is the Lord of the Nazgul,
work in the prophesy that he will not fall by the hand of any living man (as a
wink to the audience that has seen The Lord of the Rings), and then have
it turn out to be Sauron himself. Much easier than this mess.

Related to the failure of the Necromancer sub-plot is that
flaw that just keeps on giving: Elrond. Hugo Weaving is by all accounts a solid
actor. He was scary and believable in The
Matrix, so the problem isn’t with him, but with the direction and the
terrible script he has been given. I
understand that you have to move rapidly through the explication scenes and get
to the fights, and that you need drama rather than reasoned debate, but
honestly, Elrond is supposed to be 6000 years old and has seen anything that is
to be seen (countless defeats and countless fruitless victories). His mother
was a seagull and his father lives in a
flying boat! Yet the only thing he can do in debate is rant angrily, glare out
from under his eyebrows, and criticize. First of all, he is never right
and second of all nobody ever listens to him. You’d think he would have learned how to be
persuasive after all this time. So it’s a great idea to think “let’s
dramatize the dissention on the White Council” but it’s terrible execution to
have it turn into a stupid lowest-common-denominator yelling match like the
Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring film. You’ve got good
enough actors that they don’t always have to be turned up to eleven.

Other weaknesses are more forgivable, if only because we
can’t ask Jackson to go against powerful tides of Hollywood culture, and, well,
with the good that he does by filming what he likes to film (beautiful scenery,
perfect props and sets), we have to take the bad of him following certain less
artistic obsessions. Peter Jackson likes to film rocks flying through the air
and things tipping over. A lot. In slow motion. And he does in this film. A
lot. In slow motion. It gets boring rapidly and sucks the narrative tension out
of later scenes. We know that Bilbo isn’t really going to fall off the cliff
and die when the Stone Giants come out in the storm, but it makes us care less
that he might fall off of various other tall and teetering things later. Too
many times we see something that is visually cool but emotionally empty, a
soon-to-be-built amusement park ride at Disney World (swinging back and forth
on ropes, plunging through tunnels) rather than a real moment of danger or
wonder. The battle with the wargs and goblins in the trees at the end was
almost ruined by this weakness in Jackson. It’s an unforced error, since the scene
in the book has much more emotional tension in it: the dwarves are chased up
the trees by the wargs. The trees don’t fall over, but the dwarves are trapped.
Then Gandalf tries the burning pine-cone trick, and the wolves are being
burned, chased away, etc., but the forest as a whole starts to catch on fire,
and then the goblins arrive, take charge of the situation, and start fires at
the bases of each tree. The tension escalates, the goblins jeer and sing, and
at the last minute, the eagles come. No
tipping over trees, falling dwarves, etc., but a great deal more emotional
impact (this scene is partially saved by the excellence of the eagles vs. wargs
battle).

Emotional impact is also lost due to Jackson’s tendency to let
Hollywood convention overpower character and story development. The dwarves
should not have attacked the trolls with weapons—save that for later. And although the trolls sequence actually
works reasonably well, the dwarves tied to a roasting spit so high above the
fire that they would never have been cooked is just too goofy: put them in the
sacks and let the trolls argue while standing over them, boiling water,
building up the fire, etc.. Even more importantly, Bilbo should not have fought
against an anonymous goblin with Sting or against Azog, either. Save that
moment for his great triumph against the spiders (and speaking of the spiders,
why on earth does Jackson telegraph that move? Save them and make their horror
that much more of a surprise). Bilbo’s character development is weakened by him
simply picking up the sword and fighting, and the bounds of plausibility are
unnecessarily stretched when he does effective ninja-style sword fighting
against experienced and much larger foes. Let him clutch his sword and be in
the back or off to the side until the time comes (in the next film) for him to
be heroic in that way.

But despite all these flaws, in overall assessment The
Hobbit is a good, fun film (I’ll go see it again, and I never thought that
about The Two Towers). Films are, after all, primarily a visual medium,
and when the visuals are so good we can forgive other things (things that books
will always do better, anyway). I was a little surprised at how precisely some
of Jackson’s images match The Lord of the Rings On-line computer game:
Goblin Town is an almost perfect rip-off (and as both are different from
anything in the books, I have to wonder if someone on the production team
sneaked a peak), dwarvish architecture is also awfully consistent with the MMO,
as are particular features in Rivendell. But perhaps great minds do think alike.

And give Jackson the credit he deserves: Bag End is perfect,
the unexpected party legitimately funny and over all far better than I would
have predicted (only a few minor flaws—note to directors: I lived in fraternity
house for four years; no one ever dumps good beer down his face. It’s a stupid
Hollywood convention that can be dropped). Bilbo himself is played
note-perfect, as is Balin, and Thorin for the most part, and Gandalf remains
the real Gandalf. The opening sequence of the dragon’s attack on Erebor and
Dale is stunning, with the brilliant idea of making the fire more liquid in its
behavior than any on-screen fire I’ve ever seen: it is all the more terrifying.
The Great Goblin is the most hideous monster in film history. Galadriel is what
she should have been in The Fellowship, naturally glowing and beautiful and fundamentally strange, but without
any obvious, cheesy special effects. And Andy Serkis’ Gollum may actually have
gotten better: Riddles in the Dark is very well done indeed, though again,
Jackson couldn’t resist a silly effect of having the Ring bounce up into the
air and land perfectly on Biblo’s finger. And though there are a few times when
his facial expressions didn’t seem to match what he was saying, Richard
Armitage creates a Thorin that the audience believes and cares about: can a
dwarf king be as big a heartthrob and action hero as Aragorn? Surprisingly,
yes. (I predict that a certain anticipated scene at the end of the third Hobbit
film will be one of the biggest tear-jerkers in cinematic history).

So overall The
Hobbit is what you would expect from a Peter Jackson film: flawed by a weak
script but saved by visual genius and, most importantly, by its source, J.R.R.
Tolkien, who had the secret key to the hidden door of our imaginations.

Mike, didn't you have a hand in LotRO if I remember correctly? I actually said the same thing about the Shire and Goblin Town to my wife as I was watching the Hobbit... And yes, Rivendell looks even more like it does in LotRO than it did in the original movies. (I played LotRO for 2 years from the beginning)

I agree with most of your review as well. I thought Azog was weak. There were ways to increase the conflict without him. I actually think if they just used Azog's albino Warg who survived the Moria battle as seeking revenge against Thorin, it would have been a better choice. He could have been the leader of the talking wargs in the hobbit that trap the dwarves in the trees and that would have segued better into the Battle of 5 Armies later.

If you're up for a further discussion, I'd love to hear more of your thoughts. I've got a lot more to say on the matter.

What you said, pretty much! It's come out that I reviewed the script in advance for WB, and what you saw is pretty much what I saw. I wanted to wait till after I saw the film, though, because you pointed out some things I did not remember from the script, like Thror ruling by divine right -- and no, that wasn't in the last version they send me. Must have been a late addition. And the business with Thranduil bowing his head to Thror wasn't in there either.

Like you, I think the emphasis on home was a nice touch. In children's literature, there is often a motif of losing and regaining one's home, and I'm glad Jackson noticed and played up this aspect of the tale.

I certainly agree that having anyone invoke "divine right" in Middle-earth is anachronistic at best. But I must nonetheless point out that it's not accurate to say categorically that "there is no reference to God in Middle-earth". Even if by "in Middle-earth" you mean "in those parts and times of Middle-earth that figure in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", there are scattered references and allusions to Ilúvatar/Eru/The One found in "The Lord of the Rings" (and not just in the Appendices either).

Thanks for this great review. Your thoughts on Bilbo's and Elrond's characters are particularly insightful. But I wasn't convinced by this bit:

'the idea that The Hobbit should be a light-hearted children’s story and played more for laughs than epic seriousness. [...] There's nothing wrong with showing "what really happened" rather than sticking to the way The Hobbit treats the events.'

I don't get it. I wouldn't go so far as to say that there is something "wrong" with adopting a different narrative approach, but I'm sure it matters. We can agree that the Hobbit does tell "what really happened" - all the facts are there. What the book tells is not more or less real in the secondary world because it is presented as a children's story. What is different is the tone of the narrator's voice, the point of view, the assumptions about his audience, and a different language, but all this doesn't necessarily mean giving up "epic seriousness". When we rejoice in seeing those rare parts where Jackson's Hobbit captures something of the depth of the original, surely those parts reached us in the book's style, and were none the less powerful for it.

I think (and I believe many would agree) that one of Tolkien's greatest achievement in both H and LOTR was to present a world where heroism was possible, and which was in some way believable today. If this (or any other statement you wish to make about the value of his fantasy works) is true, it is so of Bilbo's story no less than of Frodo's. By chance rather than design, The Hobbit did this within the conventions of a children's book, while the "waggery" of for-children-from-the-ages-of-A-to-B just can't be applied to LOTR. The latter is designed on a grander scale and can encompass many more subjects, motifs and styles, but the content is not so different in nature. It is (to use old terminology) the form that varies.

If one was to write The Hobbit today, the challenge would be: "Give me the same heroism as in LOTR, the same exaltation of the humble, the same epic battles and heroic death, the same feeling of a background of untold stories, but cloak all this in a children's book. It won't be a mistake (as Tolkien felt) but a victory, because your readers' experience will be a lot richer. It will probably be more difficult than doing in in the style of LOTR. Don't give me simply a LOTR prequel". Of course this is just speculation because Tolkien didn't write H to explore narrative possibilities after LOTR. But the unknown person who advised against rewriting the book (HotH:811-2) got it right, and presumably Tolkien saw the truth in this, because nobody actually forced him to abandon the 1960 Hobbit like he did. The "truth in this" would be that the children's-book approach adds rather than detracts from the value of the work, or of the conjunction of both books. Witness the millions of readers who love the H just the way it is.

Jackson did have this challenge, or at least this possibility, before him. Keeping (more or less) the tone and voice of his first trilogy instead was a conscious decision. Maybe he thought he would be improving the story (and didn't have anyone around to tell him otherwise), or wasn't up to the challenge, or didn't want to abandon a successful formula. Or, just as he had Jacksonized LOTR to his own style and likings, you can only expect him to be himself in his H. One way or another, Jackson wasn't the right director if what one wanted was the children's Hobbit. Apparently he's good at what he does (the visuals) and gets the credit for it, but I can only see the result as an impoverishment.

[I guess that if ever Jackson made "The Children of Húrin" we would see (a) massive rocks falling at Glaurung's death, and (b) Mîm the Farting Petty Dwarf.]

It's far far more a LOTR prequel than "The Hobbit" and this severely disappointed me. I won't be watching them myself.

I would have preferred that it stand on its own two feet. Instead we get three LOTR prequels under the guise of The Hobbit full of filler, fanfiction-tier writing and excessive callbacks to the previous movies. It's not unlike the Star Wars prequels. I would have preferred something like Star Wars 1977.

I saw the movie yesterday with my family. Bottom line is that we all enjoyed it, but I felt the sorrow of the same regrets you did at how they worked over the story. I think there are a couple of things that (mis)guide them, and I agree that they end up communicating that they don't trust the audience (and perhaps even the material) and so they just go way off the path to stitch things together to their vision.

The who Azog thing seems like a mistake (on the other hand, my 15 year old loved it, so, again, LCD). However, I have no doubt that it is there, among other things, to make the Battle of Five Armies more tied in. There is a need to personalize things (and depersonalize other things, such as the 144,000 orcs and dwarves fighting) that can lead Jackson and company astray, in my view. We have to have Azog chasing them through the whole 3 movies, so it is more meaningful and personal when he mortally wounds Thorin and Beorn takes him and his bodyguard out (if they even decide to film it that way).

I could wish for some different choices, but I will be thinking of them while I watch this movie again (probably in an extended version) and see the other two movies half a dozen or so times over the next many years.

Overall, there are more pluses (cast, production values, landscape, cinematography, music, singing dwarves!) that minuses, but it is closer than I would have wished.

A footnote-it does seem they have decided to systematically take any of the "fairy tale" elements out this telling. No talking Wargs or Eagles, no talking troll purse, and certainly no silly singing Elves. I can understand the impulse, and yet I wish there had been more nods to that wonderful gentle magical that Middle Earth was in those elements. We'll have to see how they do with Beorn and his stead. I have a feeling that they will avoid the marvelous animals there too.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. So, now we have to wait for the next one!

Agree with much of what you've said. I've always felt that the biggest problem with Jackson's Tolkien adaptations is his essential lack of understanding of the material. I actually often feel like he doesn't particularly *like* Tolkien's works very much. I often sense a lack of trust in the audience as well, as you mentioned.

The "divine right" passage really bothered me as well, as well as the lazy use of the term "human" when Saruman guesses that the Necromancer is "a human sorcerer dabbling in black magic", or something to that effect. Tolkien never uses "human" in the stories to refer to the race of Man (though I realize he did in some letters) -- it sounds so cheesily Dungeons-&-Dragons-esque. It's strange because they seemed to take care with the script in the "Rings" films to avoid this kind of cheesiness -- for example Aragon's "I am mortal and you are Elf-kind" line to Arwen. But aside from quibbles of terminology I thought the script was generally pretty dramatically poor in any case.

Ultimately I was very disappointed by the film, which I thought was a clear step down from the generally very good (though still flawed) "Rings" films.

Mike, I agree with just about every comment, for and against what Jackson has done. But I think there's another fundamental problem in giving "The Hobbit" the LOTR treatment. That is, that there's only one hobbit. In LOTR, book & film, the hobbits actually stand for the humans, the "people" with whom we can identify, their hopes and struggles and failures and comradeship and resourcefulness. Jackson got this more or less right in LOTR (although Merry and Pippin, particularly Merry, got off to a bad start by being played as gormless clowns). But one Bilbo has noone of his own kind to react with. Instead we have far too many dwarves; Jackson should have been bold and cut the number of these, and tried to create in their company some of the "human" interactions with which we could identify.

my God. for someone of your position i expected more than what i got out of that review. i agree that the film was no gem. it was overly tedious and had too much cgi for my liking. but, some of the things you complained about were the better parts of the film. the dwarf/goblin war was well done. and smaller? why?? it was no small war in the real story. and certainly didnt need to be dubbed down to create character growth. the scene was there specifically to show what drove thorin(in the movie) to have such angst against azog, and vice versa. you are reviewing from a reader's standpoint. and you cant do that. you have to critique this film as a film, from a film standpoint.

In the end, it will probably become clear that the animated "The Hobbit" from the '70s was the better film. It didn't lack for voice talent and the animation was attractive and appropriate. It turns out that much of the animation was done by the same people who eventually formed Studio Ghibli which explains the high quality.

About Me

I am Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College, Norton, Mass., where I teach Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, medieval literature, fantasy, science fiction and writing. I am also a Millicent C. McIntosh Fellow. My scholarship is focused on tenth-century English literature and culture, meme-based theories of culture, and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.